


ofgjdkdbdkjewkfjbdbf

by piskipookos



Category: Dark Souls III
Genre: Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, patches isnt as good at disguises as he likes to think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21707602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piskipookos/pseuds/piskipookos
Summary: A timeline where Patches saves Greirat from the dangers of Lothric just in time
Relationships: Greirat of the Undead Settlement/Unbreakable Patches, greipatches
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	ofgjdkdbdkjewkfjbdbf

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this probably has lots of typos and some stumbling prose bc im too embarassed to proofread what i write but hope u enjoy!! these boys make me very happy

"Hey, what happened to Greirat, anyhow?” a heavy hand landed on the Ashen One’s shoulder, and tugged them back slightly, firmly grounding them at the side of Unbreakable Patches, who had a characteristic sneer on his face and uncharacteristic fearful furrow in his brow. “I haven't seen him at all lately. If you know where he's scurried off to, be sure and tell me,” he laughed, a breathy, fake wheeze, “I need to stock up, and if he's gone and croaked, he'll have left a goldmine."  
The Ashen One averted their eyes, then raised both hands up to the thief’s face, slowly signing as though their fingers were stone, “L-o-t-h-r-i-c Castle,” and Patches’ grip tightened cruelly around their shoulder, his nails digging crescent moons into their shoulder through his gloves.  
Creases under his damp eyes deepened, and he broke his tight grimace with a pained grunt to speak, “Off to Lothric, eh? The castle of no return…” Finally, he released the Ashen One, shoving them a bit as he abruptly freed them from his grip, and he stared at his hand, still curled into a trembling claw. “The old thief’s lost it if he thinks he has a chance in there,” he breathed, voice wet.  
He raised his harsh gaze to meet the Ashen One, but they had already lowered theirs and turned away.  
Once they began to walk away, he sighed, and laughed a strangled sound, speaking into the air, “He’s not new to this… What’s gotten into him?”  
The Ashen One turned back, giving him an apologetic look, but his glare was cold and his mouth twisted between something of a grimace and a grin, and they quickly turned, making sure to flee quickly before whatever storm they anticipated hit.

“Sorry friend, but there’s someone much more important than whoever you’ve got your eyes on who needs protecting,” Patches laughed into the Black Hand’s ear as he yanked his spear out of the assassin’s guts.  
He watched the gaping, bloody hole as he crumpled, and felt bile burn his throat. It was messier than he’d like, and crueler than he was comfortable with, but no assassin was as trusting as that jolly Catarinan he’d robbed blind, and there was no ledge nearby that his usual, nonlethal trick might work on.  
The elevator shaft was briefly considered, but now it would just be a place to hide the body, he decided as he pulled off the Black Hand’s uniform. It made him slightly ill, he realized, for all his bluffing about stripping trinkets off corpses, it seemed more horrible than he had expected, at least when it was by his hand directly.  
At least, he let the late assassin keep his bottom layer of clothes, he decided as he shrugged the ragged, thinned gambeson over his shoulders and strapped on the pauldron, though as he was trying to buckle on the ragged cloak, an icey, angry bolt grazed his temple and he yelped, rolling away to narrowly avoid the next volley.  
“Hey!” he snapped, crouched defensively and baring his teeth like a dog, but suddenly his furious gaze snapled wide as he locked eyes with the witch who decided to tangle with him.  
“You!” she spat, pointing her staff at him, and Patches laughed incredulously at her. “Y-you come here of all places, like whatever kind of madman you are, after having the a-audacity to- to steal from me and my mentors, you and y-your little worm friend!” Her brows were furrowed and her whole face darkened with rage as she remembered the escapades of Patches and Greirat when she had studied in Farron, but Patches was suddenly just as furious.  
“He is a rat!” he yelped, and flung himself at her, though she had the sense to quickly sidestep his furious lunge and smirked when he smashed to the ground.  
She was the daughter of crystal, Kriemhild, after all, and had studied in Farron with the Abyss Watchers. By no means could she be caught off guard by a simple thief’s berserker violence.  
Patches growled as he picked himself up, one hand white-knuckled and gripping his spear and the other wrapped in the bundle of the Black Hand’s cloak, greaves, gauntlets, and belts.  
They had reached an impasse, apparently, and they both stood, ready to attack at a moment's notice but neither of them moving.  
The second Patches raised his foot, moving to back up, on a hair trigger Kriemhild lifted her staff and began shooting bolts of glowing blue sorcery at him, and it was all he could do to cover himself with his arms as the lances glanced off whatever skin they could find.  
“Wench!” he yelled, desperately trying to back up, even as he was assaulted by her unrelenting magic.  
Just as her energy ran out, Patches heel hit the steps, and he stumbled forward onto his knees, wheezing as he tried to wipe the blood oozing off his hands and face onto his pants.  
She was advancing on him, however, and she smirked, revelling in the genuine fear that glimmered in the uncertainly smirking thief’s eyes.  
Not that Unbreakable Patches was one to fight honorably, and he looked over his shoulder, the doorway right behind him catching his eye.  
“Look, Kriemhild, I’m here for a friend, I dunno what business you have with me, but why not let bygones be bygones?” he asked, straightening up, though still bent over in a crouch, and he stepped back, shrugging.  
“Absolutely not, you s-slinking cockroach,” she responded immediately, and took two steps to match his retreat. It was obvious though, that her hands shook with the drain of using so much magic, and Patches couldn’t help grinning as he pushed his luck and retreated further up the stairs.  
Her eyes narrowed, and she whipped a shining, crystalline rapier off her belt, aiming it between Patches eyes. “Don’t. Take another step,” she growled, and he laughed nervously.  
“I would never.”  
He turned and dashed up the stairs, stumbling and tripping and falling and dragging himself back up by one of the railings in the room he was in, and as he felt his back pelted by sorceries once more and Kriemhild’s offended yells assaulted his ears, his eyes caught the elevator that was conveniently lifted to this floor.  
“Ha!” he yelled out, turning and looking at her with a devilish smirk, and he pulled down his eyelid and stuck out his tongue, blowing her the smuggest raspberry known to mankind as he stepped back onto the elevator trigger.  
While the mechanisms ground to life, Kriemhild’s jaw dropped, and he waved to her as he was rapidly lowered to the Archives ground floor, her shocked face the last thing he saw before the floor was above his head.  
As the elevator descended he cackled to himself, breathing into his contraband cloak to muffle his laughter. Once the elevator hit the ground he took a deep breath and pulled on the cloak, wrapping the cowl around his mouth and nose and pulling the hat over his eyes. The greaves were strapped on as he walked, and he sighed when he stepped into the entrance of the Grand Archives once more. Because of that stupid witch, he’d have to retrace his steps, again.  
Maybe this time, at least, he’d find Greirat, he mused as he ducked past some Thralls and tumbled into the elevator on the opposite end of the Archives, and he had another whole elevator trip where he sat and pinched his brow and grumbled, desperately hoping the stupid old rodent would show his face.  
He stood, glaring out from under his stolen hat, and ran past the bookshelves trap of horrid, life-sapping arms that had caught him far too off-guard for his liking once already, and stepped out onto the roof.  
Sweat dripped from under his heavy clothing, and he huffed into his cowl, grumbling as he realized how far he would go for this stupid, sweet, wonderful, and utterly suicidal old man. The ladder went ignored as he hopped off the higher ledge he was on, and he flinched when he heard yelling.  
Of course.  
Greirat.  
Immediately Patches was consumed by panic and he froze, hands trembling like an old woman until Greirat yelled again and he ran, ungluing his feet from the cinder block roof towards the sound of his absolutely empty-headed friend. He barely saw what happened, but there was stone, and Greirat, and blood, and Greirat stumbled and Patches saw his foot slip off the edge of the roof and-  
Patches grabbed him by his leather chestpiece, yanking the smaller man into his breast and curling around him in a ball.  
The fall was long, and he definitely felt his shoulder snap in an ugly cruel sound, and his head felt hot where he hit it against the ground, and it hurt nightmarishly to hold Greirat with his shattered arm, but he continued holding onto the foolish old rat like death, and scraped himself to his feet with his human cargo hiding his face in his clothes and shaking.  
As he watched his partner in crime tremble in his arms Patches reached up with a shaky hand to touch his friend’s cheek but quickly snatched his hand back, as he felt his cheeks tinge pink, and he smiled under his cloak.  
When Greirat finally turned his head to his savior, he revealed a nasty, bone deep gouge torn through his hood and reaching down his cheek to his neck, and the hand Patches retracted flew to his friend’s cheek, pulling unintentionally roughly at the skin as he inspected the wound.  
“That looks quite nasty, friend. What were you to do if a dashing rogue hadn’t shown up to save you?”  
The scrap of Greirat’s eyes he could see through his hood welled with tears, and abruptly he began to laugh, a high, wounded peal mixed with tears, and Patches gently cradled his friends head to his chest, riding out the shaking sobs racking him, and he ended up setting him on his feet to give his wounded arm a break, but he quickly sank to the ground, and Patches went with, cradling the now silent man in his lap. He had one hand placed awkwardly on his friend’s back, uncertain on how to comfort him, but when he noticed more blood oozing onto his leg, he sighed and reached into his pocket, pulling out a needle he kept in there, and while he lamented his “new” clothes he ripped through the threads of his gambeson, and stripped out as long a piece as he could get, lacing it through the needle.  
“I’m no expert,” he began, lifting up the smaller man’s head, “and I may be working one-handed right now, but you have to get cleaned up before you can go — don’t want you keeling over ‘cause you got lightheaded on the way home.” Greirat stared blankly at him, amber eyes peering from his hood, and Patches took that as an invitation, propping his head against his broken shoulder while he sewed up the ragged wound that ran from his cheek to his breast.  
Every time Greirat flinched, Patches did as well, and he thought he may be ill, as he had to repeatedly stick a sharp tool into his friend, and he grimaced every time he looked up to see the ugly work of the stitches he had already put in, but when he was done, he gasped in relief and pulled him to his feet, giving him a light smack on the head(opposite the most gruesome of his wounds).  
“Stay safe, you slimey old fool.”  
Greirat’s eyes crinkled in a smile through his hood, and he hopped lightly off the roof, down onto a ledge just below, and Patches watched closely, making sure he scurried away safely.

Fortunately, his pilfered cloak made a fantastic sling for his arm, which he was all but certain wouldn’t set right after he used it to carry a 5’10” man, a revelation Patches had while limping his way back to Firelink Shrine. His leg wasn’t broken, he had check, though it was purple with bruising, as was the side of his head once he washed the blood off. Puddles didn’t make the best mirrors, but it was enough to see he looked particularly hellish, with his face all nicked and scraped up and half of it colored like a grape, and he thought about Greirat and prayed that whatever foolish god would listen to his wishes would let the older thief not see his injuries, and he was thankfully spared of anyone seeing him as he dragged himself up the stairs to his usual spot, not that he could sit how he typically did with his leg and arm in quite a condition.  
And he sat down, but proceeded to crumple, immediately fading into sleep.  
He woke with Greirat sitting over him, and the hooded man tilted his head in his equivalent of a smile. “Is my dashing rogue, o-okay?” he asked, and when Patches got to hear his friend’s soft voice and characteristic stutter again he bolted up and pulled Greirat into a crushing hug with his good arm, planting little kisses all over his hood to try and hide his eyes that welled with tears.  
When he calmed down his grip loosened, and he pressed his forehead against Greirat’s, releasing him from the hug to cradle his cheek.  
“You’re an idiot. Stupid, foolish old man, empty-headed rodent, slinking little rat bastard,” he breathed, and Greirat laughed.  
“Th-thank you, I-I’m… I’m glad I can trust you,” he smiled, and Patches let out a strangled noise as Greirat embraced him.


End file.
